Columbia Law School, Georgetown University Law School, Stanford Law School, UCLA School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California Center for Law, History, and Culture invite submissions for the nineteenth meeting of the Law and Humanities Junior Scholars Workshop, to be held at UCLA School of Law in Los Angeles, CA, on Sunday, June 7, and Monday, June 8, 2020. The deadline for submissions is Dec. 2, 2019.

The Northwestern Center on Law, Business, and Economics is issuing a call for original research papers to be presented at the Thirteenth Annual Conference on Innovation Economics. The conference will be held at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, IL. The conference will run from approximately 9:00 A.M. on Thursday, June 11, 2020 to 3:00 P.M. on Friday, June 12, 2020.

The conference is organized by Daniel F. Spulber. The conference will be a combination of panel discussions, invited talks, and some selected submitted works in both law and economics. The focus on the conference will be on public policy developments, including recent antitrust cases.

The Food and Drug Law Institute will host their 2020 Food and Drug Law Symposium on November 13, 2020 in Washington, D.C. The theme of the symposium is: This Teachable Moment: How COVID-19 Provides Lessons from FDA’s Past and Present That Will Benefit Its Future Preparedness.

The Food and Drug Law Institute solicits legal scholarship on the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic and how past and present lessons provide guidance for the future.

The Past: How do the polio, swine flu, SARS, and other past health and other crises aid in our understanding of how FDA and other federal agencies should navigate pandemics?

The Present and Future: What are the immediate lessons of the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic and how can they help inform future action? Would legislative or regulatory changes help FDA and other agencies respond to future pandemics?

Abstracts may be submitted through the Conference website. Submissions are due by June 15, 2020.

Abstracts are now being accepted for the WINIR Workshop on Repugnant Behaviours to be held February 24-25, 2021 at the University of Montpellier in Montpellier, France.

Formally introduced in economics by Nobel laureate Alvin Roth, the concept of “repugnance” arises in the debate among philosophers (e.g., Elizabeth Anderson, Michael Sandel, Debra Satz) and other social scientists (e.g., Kristie Blevins, Amitai Etzioni, Kimberly Krawiec, Amartya Sen, Philip Tetlock) about how and why moral concerns, taboos and sacred values place, or ought to place, limits on market transactions. (A set of representative references is provided in the attached call for papers.)

One of the most important questions in this debate is how repugnant behaviours should be dealt with, regulated or limited. Some suggest that repugnant behaviours should be punished by using fines rather than fees, because the former register moral disapproval, whereas the latter are simply prices that imply no moral judgment. This suggests that repugnant behaviors offend our moral or ethical values. Yet examples often used to illustrate repugnant behaviours include selling babies (or other human beings) and organs, as well as prostitution and sometimes even pollution. Littering the Grand Canyon is also deemed to be repugnant. But can all these behaviours be put on the same footing? If not, how ought we distinguish between them? Is repugnance an absolute concept or a relative one? Does it change across cultures? Does this mean that the limits of markets differ from one culture to another? If so, are we really talking about repugnance? What alternative concepts might be useful?

These questions are important from a philosophical, institutional and legal perspective. Indeed, can we rely on the same mechanism to punish someone who sold their child and someone who threw a can into the Grand Canyon? Must we rely on law and formal institutions to punish repugnant behaviours? Which ones? When and how do we draw the limit between the behaviours that can be punished by formal rules and those that must be punished by informal rules (such as ostracism, shaming or even embarrassment)?

The purpose of the WINIR Workshop on Repugnant Behaviours is to bring together theoretical and applied papers from different disciplines, including economics, philosophy, law and political science, to discuss these and other related questions, thereby clarifying the concept of “repugnance” and improving our understanding of how to regulate repugnant behaviours.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong announces an online conference, Directions in Legal Education 2020, to be held June 18-20, 2020. Papers are invited on a wide range of legal education topics, including wellness, diversity, and teaching in a time of crisis.

Submit an abstract of 250 words to vivianc@cuhk.edu.hk with the subject ‘CUHK Law abstract submission – (speaker name)’ by May 31, 2020. Please include the following information within your submission: title of paper, author name(s); institutional affiliation and email address. The full call for papers is available here.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law would like to invite you to participate in the ‘Directions in Legal Education Conference 2020’ to be held online on June 18 – 20, 2020. The deadline for proposals for presentations is May 31, 2020.

One of the central discussion themes will be ‘Teaching law in time of crisis – it’s not just going on-line’.

The conference is free of charge. Please feel free to share this event with interested persons. Registration is available on the conference website.

Luohan Academy will host the 3rd Annual Conference on Digital Economy on June 22-23, 2020, in Hangzhou, China.The deadline for submissions is Apr. 1, 2020.

The academy was established in June 2018 by the Alibaba Group and its academic committee, which includes six Nobel laureates. The Annual Conference is an open platform for leading academic researchers, business practitioners, and policymakers from around the world to share their views, their latest findings and sharpen their ideas through focused discussions about how to promote digital technology and its applications for the benefit of our society.

Digital technology is fundamentally changing the foundation of the macroeconomy. It is changing how consumers produce and collect information, build trust systems, and make decisions, and how producers coordinate and relate to consumers. It is also destined to reshape research, just as Galilei’s telescope challenged preconceived notions of our solar system, science, and the world. Digital technology embodies the same power in that it provides new methods and models for research. Yet, the academic community is lagging in understanding and helping society to cope with the opportunities and challenges brought by technology.

To understand the impact of digital technology – mobile internet, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, etc. – on the economy, business, and society, it requires an interdisciplinary approach where best theory meets frontier practice. We welcome submissions of research that ranges broadly across economics, finance, law, sociology, psychology, and other social sciences. Potential topics include, but not restricted to, the relation between digital technology and macro issues (economic growth and equality), organizational issues (nature of work, employment, and platform economy), policy issues (privacy, data governance, and competition policies), finance, and other social issues. Judging from past experience, selections will be highly competitive to ensure the best work can be presented.

All our committee members (see below) will come to Hangzhou to be deeply engaged for the two-day conference. Besides the academic sessions, we encourage the in-depth exchange of ideas between the best minds and entrepreneurs from some of the best technology companies. All presenters will have an opportunity to participate in a group tour of Alibaba and Ant Financial’s headquarters and network with dozens of entrepreneurs from the Hupan School of Entrepreneurship, who are CEOs from unicorns reshaping the digital economy in China.

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: The deadline for submitting a paper is April 1, 2020. All submissions and inquiries should be sent to conference@luohanacademy.com. Decisions will be made by April 15th.

ABOUT LUOHAN ACADEMY: Luohan Academy was established by Alibaba Group and a group of world-renowned social scientists in 2018, with the aim of promoting research and dialogue on the social and economic dimensions of the ongoing digital revolution. We collaborate with world-class social scientists and practitioners to explore, analyze and learn the ongoing (digital) transformation of the global society and economy. Among the research areas of our interests are inclusive growth, platform economy, digital finance, the changing nature of work, competition policy, and data security and privacy protection. With rich first-hand experiences and privileged data accumulated in a rapidly growing digital economy, Luohan Academy is a perfect place to study the socio-economic impact of digital technology.

The University of Groningen will host a Conference on Online Sexual Abuse and Criminal Law on June
25 and 26, 2020, in Groningen, the Netherlands.

The purpose of the conference is to bring together scholars in criminal law to discuss emerging legal trends and responses to online sexual abuse and sexual offences with a digital component. The conference welcomes papers on topics such as (but not limited to): grooming, child pornography, sexual corruption (including sexting), sexual exploitation, online rape, revenge pornography and covert filming. Additionally, the focus can be on interrelated issues, e.g. international obligations, minors as offenders, minors as victims and legal theoretical perspectives.

Submission Procedure:

If you are interested in presenting, please submit a bio (including previous publications) and an
abstract (300 words) to osa.cl.conference@gmail.com. The deadline for abstract submission isMonday, December 2, 2019.

The Working Group on International Students and Law Schools will host a conference on the topic of Legal Education and International Students at Masaryk University Faculty of Law in Brno, Czech Republic on June 25-26, 2020.

A Code/Charter of Best Practice in International Legal Education?Is it possible? Is it desirable? What would even be included?

This two-day conference will focus on what might be the best practices/approaches in legal education when a law school/faculty includes non-domestic law students (international or foreign law students). The first day will be devoted to panel/poster presentations on the many different issues/challenges/ approaches/solutions arising for the international students, local students, academics and institutions.

The second day will focus on what might be needed to develop an aspirational Charter or Code of Best Practice for Legal Education of International Students. The result or conclusions of that second day would then be circulated to those not in attendance at the conference (mainly law schools/faculties around the world) for their input. Depending on the conference results and the later input on any results the Working Group will then reconvene to continue the development of a Code/Charter. The ideal and eventual goal would be to produce and disseminate such a Code/Charter to which law schools/faculties could aspire.

All proposals must be submitted to cpicker@uow.edu.au by 15th February 2020. The conference committee will then consider proposals and do its best to inform those invited to present by 15th March 2020.

The Institute of Linguistics at Adam Mickiewicz University together with the International
Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law, CRDP – équipe René Demogue, Lille University
(France) will host the 21st International Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law & 15th Conference on Legal Translation and Interpreting and Comparative Legilinguistics (Legal Linguistics) on the topic Genocide and Law – Communicating Through Visual Arts and Language, June 26-28, 2020. For more information see this site. The deadline for abstracts is Feb. 28, 2020.

The Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv University will host Transitional Justice and the Crisis of Democracy on June 29-30, 2020, in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. The deadline for submissions is Feb. 15, 2020.

This call for papers invites proposals for presentation of a paper at the conference. Authors of selected proposals may be offered full or partial flight and accommodation expenses.

Submission deadline: February 15, 2020

BACKGROUND: The field of transitional justice, as it has developed since the late 1980s, has largely been based on particular understandings of the relationship between democracy, the rule of law, accountability and truth, according to which law was to simultaneously serve functions of justice, truth-telling and establishing solid democratic foundations. These perceptions of the role of law in transition from authoritarian regimes to democracy have been translated into various institutional innovations and legal reforms such as truth commissions, public apologies, hybrid courts, international and universal criminal jurisdiction, reparations and restitution.

In a seeming reversal of the movement of transitions to democracy, in recent years we are witnessing a worldwide phenomenon of democratic decline in both new and established democracies, in which the transition away from democracy is facilitated by legal tools and the rejection of the authority of science and objective facts. This crisis has brought about a stream of theoretical explanations captured by labels such as “populism”, “abusive constitutionalism”, “constitutional backsliding”, “authoritarian legalism”, “post-truth age”, “backlash”, etc.

Despite the centrality of law and truth in both the literature on transitional justice and on democratic decline, until now there has been no attempt to bring together these bodies of thinking, and to explore how they can inform each other. This conference aims to start an interdisciplinary scholarly conversation on the relationship between transitional justice and the current crisis of democracy. During the conference, key questions on the interaction between these two concepts will be investigated: How may “transitions”, “truth” and “democracy” be conceptualized in conjunction with each other in these times? What can current transitions away from democracy teach us about the working assumptions and theoretical foundations of transitional justice scholarship? If the tools of transitional justice are turned against democracy and political liberalism, what does this tell us about the faults of the transitional justice discourse? What light can the scholarship of transitional justice, long occupied with the question of law’s relationship to democracy, shed on the current crisis? What role can trials of mass violence and other mechanisms, which inter alia seek to establish facts and tell the truth, play in the post-truth era? What is the role of civil society in processes of transition? How can we understand the relationship between the rise of transitional justice and the decline of democracy?

In particular, the conference seeks to ask whether the critiques that have been voiced relating to transitional justice are relevant to the literature on democratic decline and whether the analysis of democratic crisis are useful to reevaluate and expand current understandings of transitional justice. What is the relationship between the marginalization of the economy and economic actors in the field of transitional justice and a phenomenon such as Brexit? What is the relationship between the dominance of human rights in transitional justice and the rise of populism and ethnic nationalism? Where does feminism fit in each body of literature, and what is its relation to the hegemony of neo-liberalism? Should the literature on democratic decline be submitted to the same postcolonial critique that was levelled against the field of transitional justice?

Bringing together lawyers, historians, political theorists and social scientists specializing in transitional justice and democratic decline, this conference aims to explore the multiple meeting points of the two fields in order to promote new understandings in both; thus, aiming to shed new light on the current crisis of democracy while promoting new theoretical and practical insights in the field of transitional justice.

The conference organizers invite proposals to present a paper dealing with one or more of the above issues, or other relevant and contemporary issues relating to the topic of the conference.

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Researchers interested in addressing these issues are invited to respond to this call for papers with a proposal of up to 750 words for an article and presentation, along with a brief CV. Proposals should be submitted via: http://gss.huji.ac.il, no later than February 15, 2020.

Note that in order to apply, applicants must first create an account on the application platform website. Once the account has been created, the “TJ and Crisis of Democracy Conference” can be found under “General Applications”.

Applicants should expect notification of the committee’s decision by early March 2020. Written drafts of approx. 10-25 pages, based on the selected proposals, will be expected by June 10, 2020.

PUBLICATION: The Israel Law Review (a Cambridge University Press publication) has expressed interest in publishing selected full length papers based on conference presentations, subject to its standard review and editing procedures.